Today’s #TipTuesday post is a simple one, and it’s about user notifications. In GP 2013 R2, the “Send Users Message” feature was introduced as an easy way to send a notification to users who are logged in or to add a task to users’ reminder list in Dynamics GP.

This #TipTuesday discusses the feature introduced in GP 2013 R2, the ability to reverse a Fiscal year-end close (i.e. re-open a closed fiscal year).

Generally speaking, there should be very few reasons why this is necessary in the first place, as you have the ability to post to the previous (most recent) closed year already, which I hope most people are aware of. However, there are a couple of situations where I can see this occurring:

Some event requiring restatement of a year prior to the most recent closed year. Other than adjusting opening retained earnings, you could re-open the year to post exactly where you want this entry done and then re-close.

Fixing issues where GL accounts were set up with the wrong posting type!

This is my second post in the Did You Know series, tying into Pam’s series on Inside Dynamics GP. This feature allows users to create a one-off backup of a database from within Dynamics GP, and saving it either locally or on Azure storage. Originally introduced in GP 9, the Backup to Azure was added to this feature in GP 2013 R2.

I’ve never tried this feature before, as I had no need to in the past. One great thing about this DYK series is there will be things I’ll be trying that I may not have had an opportunity to try yet!

While this obviously wouldn’t be the normal way to create a backup, sometimes this could come in handy for specific purposes, like for consultants preparing for demos that want a quick backup of what they’ve prepared before they test a configuration, so they can re-use the data easily after restoring back. I know I don’t bother with setting up scheduled SQL jobs for backups on my environments, unless I’m mimicking something for a client. So, for that type of situation, I can see this would be a great way to simplify creating a backup without bothering to open SQL Server Management Studio when I’m right in the middle of working on some project.